¶A collection of three separately published parts of the verse satire on undergraduate life at Oxford University. Dialogues I-IV of The Oxford Spy were published collectively in 1819, with a new introduction, but omitting Dialogue the Fifth, which only appeared as a separate publication. The fifth dialogue appears to have been an afterthought: the author states in the advertisement, 'Some apology may be necessary for intruding an already threadbare subject again upon the notice of the University... In writing the former Dialogues of the Oxford Spy, I had little or no hope, that they would prove any thing more than a mere ephemeral production'.